Deal Radar 2008: Verticals onDemand

Verticals onDemand is a leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Founded in 2007 by software industry veterans, Verticals onDemand is headquartered in Pleasanton, CA with sales offices in New Jersey and Philadelphia.

VBioPharma, the company’s first product suite is tailored to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. The company brought together some of the most experienced life sciences CRM professionals to target this underserved segment. The VBioPharma suite delivers full functionality across sales, marketing, and service.

Priced on a per user, per month basis, the product suite will use web services technologies to update the reference, affiliations, and formulary data in VBioPharma daily without any manual effort. Publicis, Solstice, Indevus, Genentech, ProStrakan and Millennium are some of the companies that have chosen Verticals onDemand’s Pharma CRM.

In September 2008, Verticals onDemand partnered with Exploria SPS for an integrated CRM and closed loop marketing (CLM) solution. The company’s VBioPharma application will be fully integrated with Exploria’s CLM software to connect sales and marketing in a continuous loop for real-time information sharing.

In June 2008, the company launched a new category of on-demand applications, Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) for Life Sciences Companies. The company’s VMobile MaaS application will provide users with offline access to their VBioPharma CRM system. The application can run on any Microsoft Windows XP or Vista-based laptop or tablet PC. A few weeks after the launch, the company partnered with Apple to launch VMobile iPhone Edition. While the VMobile Tablet and PDA Editions run in a disconnected mode, VMobile iPhone Edition operates in a connected mode at all times, enabling real-time access from anywhere there is cell phone coverage. Further, the iPhone also integrates Google Maps for instant driving directions.

In April 2008, the company won Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC)’s Customer Interaction Solutionsmagazine 2008 CRM Excellence Award for VBioPharma. The company also won Beagle Research Group’s 2008 WizKids Award for VBioPharma in March 2008.

The company raised an undisclosed amount in a Series A round of funding from private investors in March 2007 and $4 million in a Series B round of funding from Emergence Capital Partners in June 2008. The latest round of funding will be used to accelerate the growth of the flagship application.

Salesforce.com’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offers the opportunity to small SaaS companies to launch custom applications without having to build expensive infrastructure and operational capabilities. In return, Salesforce.com will get to monitor closely some niche SaaS vendors like Verticals onDemand, and presumably acquire them when the time is right. Integration will be a breeze, allowing the larger company to build a powerful portfolio of niche solutions. My hypothesis, therefore, is that Verticals onDemand will be acquired by Salesforce.com within the next 12 months.

Related Readings:
*Trend Radar 2008: SaaS in the Enterprise
*Serving the Underserved: Is On-Demand BI the Answer?
*Saas: CRM & the Extended Enterprise

This segment is a part in the series : Deal Radar 2008